the soft

he is american.

act 1 

little Japanese boy, 

shuddering because he knows 

of no one here, sees nothing but 

strange American people with their

loud  voices and light hair 

and thinks of how his mother and father 

are nothing but two lines of numbers 

on a piece of paper that crumples

too easily in his growing hands 

little Japanese boy, 

eyes blurry from the plane ride 

muscles aching from the seats

neck stiff from craning his head 

backward as if he can wish back 

the inevitable.

his body feels stuck between 

Japan and America and there is 

no place for him in either worlds. 

Maybe he'll always be in the plane, 

moving forward with no destination, 

head craned back for a nonexistent past.

older American boy, 

forgets the plane ride he was on

so many years back, with that clenched 

hands and eyes that burned with tears.

some days he remembers the student 

visa he has tucked in the back of his 

drawer but in his heart they're nothing

but shards of a forgotten past

but sometimes his neck aches as if 

reminding him of the world that 

he no longer belongs to

older American boy, 

his friends are those strange

American people with the 

loud voices and the light hair.

they tell him he is no different than them.

and somehow he forgets the student visa 

marking him as a Japanese citizen, the 

student visa that lies because he

does not feel Japanese, he is 

not Japanese, he stepped off a plane 

with his head turned back and he just

learned how to walk straight again.

he belongs here.

older American boy, 

he no longer cranes his head back. 

---

part 2

older American boy, 

his mother and father lament,

we have no money for you for college. 

older American boy, 

the numbers on the phone line lament, 

your student visa can no longer apply. 

older American boy, 

meet illegal American boy. 

---

part 3 

he is on a plane again and it rocks back and forth and his tongue feel raw and swollen and all too big for his mouth and when the plane deeps beneath the clouds he would like to scream but something has grown all too big in his throat and outside there is thunder and rain and somehow the water has managed to make its way into the plane because his face is wet -- how is his face wet? and his neck aches it hurts he is stretching his head back toward america and he feels smashed between two worlds that do not want him who have never wanted him why has he ever tricked himself into thinking that america wanted him? 

he looks to his right and there is a little boy with a little bowl-head haircut and there is a scream growing out of his throat it sprouts as if a little weed had lodged itself in his cheeks and it grows wild and unwanted from his mouth and it is him with the student visa that seems to be part of his dna and a neck that looks as if someone twisted a piece of wire around itself because his body is lodged between two worlds and the walls of the plane closes in on him they want him dead. 

american boy tries to fathom japanese boy and japanese boy tries to recognize american boy but he is neither, he is invisible walking down the streets. he is illegal. 

based of a true story in my life